Cory Booker rips Homeland Security secretary's 'amnesia' on Trump comments on immigrants

WASHINGTON — Sen. Cory Booker invoked Martin Luther King and Gandhi on Tuesday as he delivered an emotional 10-minute lecture to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen over her "amnesia" about whether President Donald Trump made vulgar references to immigrants.

"When ignorance and bigotry is alive with power, it is a dangerous force in our country," Booker said. "Your silence and your amnesia is complicity."

Nielsen repeatedly told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump used "tough language" during an Oval Office meeting Thursday with senators about a bipartisan immigration deal the president did not support. But Nielsen said she did not hear him use the words "shithole" or "shithouse" in reference to Africa or Haiti.

After published reports said Trump complained about accepting immigrants from "shithole" countries, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., confirmed that Trump had used the word. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was also at the meeting, has corroborated Durbin's account.

Two Republicans who were also at the meeting, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of South Carolina, have said they did not hear Trump use the vulgar remark.

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Booker, a new member of the committee, told Nielsen he was "seething with anger" over Trump's reported comments and the willingness of some in Washington to tolerate them. He said racism grows when people do nothing to confront it, and quoted Trump's reaction to a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer in which the president blamed violence on "both sides." 

"I sit here right now because when good white people in this country heard bigotry, or hatred, they stood up," Booker said. "Moving into my home community, we were denied housing because of the color of my skin. And it was white Americans from Bergen County who banded together to fight against racism."

Booker has repeatedly described how his parents, both executives with IBM, worked with housing activists when they tried to break the color barrier in Harrington Park. After Booker's parents tried to put a bid on a home and were turned down because they were black, a white couple made an offer that was accepted and then Booker's father showed up at the closing with a housing attorney.

Booker told Nielsen that when he heard about what happened from Durbin, he found it "profoundly disturbing."

"When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage," Booker said. 

He said violent incidents motivated by racism outnumber those carried out by radical Islamists, and described death threats received not only by himself and Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who is also black, but also Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, who was born in Japan.

"There are threats in this country. People plotting. I receive enough death threats to know the reality. Kamala receives enough death threats to know the reality. Mazie receives enough death threats to know the reality.

"And I've got a president of the United States, whose office I respect, who talks about the country origins and my fellow citizens in the most despicable manner. You don't remember, you can't remember, the words of your commander in chief — I find that unacceptable."

Booker used the full 10 minutes allotted for questions at the hearing, but Nielsen was given time after he finished to respond. She chose to focus on the threat posed by supremacist groups.

"I couldn't agree with you more," she told Booker. "Our preventing terrorism programs have been reassessed and re-looked at just this year to ensure that we actually are going after the threats, to include white supremacy."

Earlier in Tuesday's hearing, Durbin asked Nielsen what she recalls Trump saying.

"What I heard him saying was that he'd like to move away from a country-based quota system to a merit-based system so it shouldn't matter where you're from, it should matter what you can contribute to the United States," she replied.

When Durbin asked her about the specific language used, Nielsen said there were about a dozen people in the room, many talking over one another.

"There was a lot of rough talk by a lot of people in the room," Nielsen said, adding she could not recall specific words. "What I was struck with, frankly, as I'm sure you were as well, is just the general profanity that was used in the room by almost everyone."

"You didn't hear me use profanity," Durbin shot back.

"No, sir," Nielsen agreed. "Neither did I."

USA Today Reporter Ledyard King contributed to this article.